Brooklyn Boulders Augmented Reality Climbing

[Jon Cheng:]
I wanted to find people who were interested in coding in Brooklyn Boulders, and I wanted to do something interactive. So I decided that I would create a video game, but I would involve climbing with it. Have people jump on the wall, start the timer, have them race up the wall as fast as they could, and then we could see who had the fastest times.

Ready?

[Jon Cheng:]
I studied a little bit of coding in college but I wasn’t very serious about it back then. It took me a few years working before I started really getting into it, and the reason why was not necessarily because I was enamored with coding itself, but I wanted to be able to build really cool things that other people could use.

Indoor climbing presents a unique opportunity for blending technology with a sport because we have these big wall, we have the ability to project things onto the walls. The folks at Brooklyn Boulders have been pretty open about the project so far. I remember when I first approached the staff there, and they were completely on board. They basically said, hey, whatever you need from us, just let us know. A lot of people think that we do these sports, we do these activities like climbing to sort of get away from the digital world, get away from our computer screens, and stuff like that. The way I kind of see it is that we do these things to get away from work, not necessarily the digital world.

Go!

It’s been really rewarding, working on the game and seeing the kind of positive reception that I’ve gotten. People who are veteran climbers loved it, and I didn’t expect this, but the kids love it too